Nucleon, Inc.

Gary P. Pisano

Case | HBS Case Collection | November 1991 (Revised April 1994)

Nucleon, Inc.

Abstract

Nucleon is a small biotechnology company whose first potential product is about to enter clinical testing. Before Nucleon can begin clinical trials, however, its management must decide how and where to manufacture the product. Three options are being contemplated: 1) build an in-house pilot plant, 2) contract production to a third-party, 3) license the development, manufacturing, and marketing rights to a corporate partner. Allows discussion of a number of manufacturing strategy issues relevant to R&D-intensive entrepreneurial firms. A key issue is the strategic value of in-house manufacturing to a company that competes largely on very distinctive and specialized R&D capabilities.

Keywords: Factories, Labs, and Plants; Entrepreneurship; Health Testing and Trials; Rights; Product Development; Production; Partners and Partnerships; Research and Development; Biotechnology Industry;

Format: Print

16 pages

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Citation:

Pisano, Gary P. "Nucleon, Inc." Harvard Business School Case 692-041, November 1991. (Revised April 1994.)

For more than two decades, scientific advances have been driving profound changes in drug discovery and the drug industry itself. This case provides an overview and description of these technical and scientific advances. Written for the nonscientific reader, it may be used as companion reading for other case materials that require basic knowledge of the tools, techniques, and approaches used in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Article | Industrial and Corporate Change | April 2020

Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015

Giovanni Dosi, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano and Federico Tamagni

Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a potential indicator of organizational “fitness” within a competitive environment, firm growth is also a central concern to both the practice and theory of business strategy. Despite both its theoretical and practical importance, though, growth remains a poorly understood property of firms. While previous studies have documented the fat-tailed nature of firm growth rates, we know far less about the patterns of growth rates over long periods of time. For instance, do “fast growers” tend to maintain their relative growth rates advantages over long periods or is superior growth a transitory phenomenon? Is, as predicted by evolutionary and capability-based theories of the firm, the process of firm growth path-dependent or is it more akin to a random walk? The answers to these questions are central to building a robust theory of firm growth. This article attempts to address this gap in our empirical knowledge of firm growth using a dataset that spans 50 years, which allows the abandonment of the assumption, common to all incumbent studies, that the stochastic paths of all firms stem from the same generating process. These exploratory results indicate that growth rate persistence is there and may be even substantial for some firms, but it is rare. We also study the links between the micro-properties of firm growth within sectors and the patterns of aggregate growth of these same sectors. Indeed, we find circumstantial but widespread evidence that heterogeneity across firms correlates with industry dynamism.

Keywords: firm growth; Organizations; Growth and Development; Theory; Analysis; Production; Data and Data Sets;

Citation:

Dosi, Giovanni, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano, and Federico Tamagni. "Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015." Industrial and Corporate Change 29, no. 2 (April 2020): 309–332. View Details

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Nucleon, Inc.

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